Tidings Podcasts

Daniyal Mueenuddin: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Sat, 6 Mar 2010 21:01:35 -0500

An interview with Daniyal Mueenuddin, the Pakistani author of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders , a series of linked short stories set in rural Pakistan that bring to life relationships among feudal landlords, their managers and servants and the emerging industrialists who have lost touch with the land.

There’s no such place as home!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:14:19 -0500

“There’s No Such Place As Home!” I conclude in a conversation with two schoolfriends who, like me, grew up in India and Pakistan and, like me, are third culture kids, also known as global nomads. Photos and text on blog.

Should we all be vegans? Update #2

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:08:17 -0500

This program was first broadcast in July, 2008 and re-broadcast on WPKN on December 16. I wanted to find out what these two vegans and animal rights advocates, Paul Shapiro and Lauren Olernas have been doing since then. They have been very, very busy and I am proud to report on their latest activities.

To read more details and for links, please visit my blog.

Link to VegGuide to find a vegetarian or vegan restaurant or grocer near you.

Should we all be vegans? Update #1

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 11:10:59 -0500

This program was first broadcast in July, 2008 and will be re-broadcast on WPKN on December 9. I wanted to find out what these two animal rights advocates, Nora Kramer and Nathan Runkle, have been doing since then. They have been very, very busy and I am proud to report on their latest activities.

To read more details and for links, please visit my blog

Link to VegGuide to find a vegetarian or vegan restaurant or grocer near you.

Photo courtesy Jack, Ornamental Plantings Greenhouses, Southold, NY

Beyond barter: an alternative currency system

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:33:47 -0500

Based in Ithaca, New York, Ithaca HOURS is one of more than 2,500 alternative money systems worldwide. Steve Burke, president of the organization, explains how, by keeping the earning and spending of money local, it enlivens the community and strengthens self-reliance.

Why isn’t healthcare a human right?

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:12:19 -0400

Since I interviewed Dr. Sara Bhattacharji in India earlier this year, I’ve witnessed the raging debates surrounding healthcare in this country and searched for why Germany, India and the United States have such different approaches to healthcare.

The Body Toxic: Nena Baker

Thu, 3 Sep 2009 16:04:15 -0400

My interview with Nena Baker, investigative jounalist and author of the newly released paperback The Body Toxic, where she exposes the hazardous chemistry in the things we use every day and how they threaten the health and well-being of us all.

The other side of Israel: Susan Nathan

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

An interview with author Susan Nathan, the only Jew living in a town of 30,000 Arabs in northern Israel. She talks about how how her own activism has changed from aggression to compassion and about the ‘divide’ between Israel’s citizens--the 20% who are Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish majority.

Zionism under attack

Sun, 5 Jul 2009 09:13:27 -0400

Two American Jewish men, one a secular blogger and writer and the other, a deeply orthodox member of Neturei Karta, both with the family name Weiss, discuss the reasons they are anti-Zionists.

Health care is a human right

Thu, 7 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

An interview with Dr. Sara Bhattacharjee of Christian Medical College’s Low Cost Effective Care Unit located in Vellore, Tamil Nadu in South India. She talks about her philosophy and practice of primary health care and community medicine in the slums and villages of Vellore.

Making sense of a world in crisis: part 3 Dr. Michael Conforti

Thu, 5 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In the third and last part of this series, you will hear my conversation with Dr. Michael Conforti, a Jungian analyst, author and founder of the Assisi Institute, who uses the theories of Carl Jung to develop his Archetypal Pattern Analysis in which he provides what he calls ‘a meaningful confluence between science, spirituality and psychology’. Using these lens, he shares with us his views of the crisis in our world.

Making sense of a world in crisis: part 2 Andrew Harvey

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In the second of a three-part series, Andrew Harvey, a well known and distinguished mystic and scholar, a poet and a novelist, a translator of Rumi and, as architect of Sacred Activism and the Institute of Sacred Activism, a spiritual teacher and writer. He talks about the global crisis and the choices we face between, he says, suicide and transformation.

Making sense of a world in crisis: part 1: John Daido Loori and Peter Russell

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In this first of a three-part series, two conversations: the first with John Daido Loori, current abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, who analyses our current global crisis from a Zen Buddhist perspective; the second with Peter Russell, a writer and speaker who examines the tumult and crisis of our world in terms of our belief systems and the part that a developed consciousness can play in liberating our minds.

What makes an activist?

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:44:31 -0500

Why do some people become activists while others look on from the sidelines, unmoved by situations that a committed activist finds intolerable? We’re all against oppression and injustice and we all believe human rights are hugely important and must be defended at all cost—but not necessarily by us. Others however, hear a call that the rest of us don’t hear and they respond, believing that their presence is required elsewhere, sometimes on foreign soil. Somehow it’s the ‘foreign soil’ part that seems of particular significance to me. What makes such people different from you and me? Are they fearless? More in touch with their conscience? Perhaps they have less to lose back home? Do we each have a tipping point?

Dark tourism

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:59:46 -0500

Perhaps the repetitive pressure of much contemporary life has stimulated our appetites for the authentic and the spectacular, allowing the emergence of a new genre--dark tourism and the dark tourist, motivated by death and disaster and apocalypse rather than by sun and sea and sand and pastoral living, with even eco-tourism and adventure travel no longer stimulating enough.

Beggars and begging

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:15:22 -0400

The questions we ask are: is begging a profession? a misfortune? a scourge? a spiritual practice? is it perhaps an industry? Do beggars have the right to beg, to choose to support themselves by begging? Do we have the right to remove them and relocate them to where we don’t have to see them?

Tipping: do we have to?

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:13:20 -0400

Do we have to tip?

I talk to waiters, debate whether tipping is "a class struggle, one meal at a time" and compare tipping in the US with practices around the world.

(This was broadcast in September and includes WPKN’s fundraising pitches. But they’re not boring!)

For more Parisian menus

The story of Zatoun, olive oil from Palestine

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:19:32 -0400

Olive oil from Palestine has to confront many, many obstacles to arrive at our kitchens in North America. The occupation, along with poor economic conditions, underlies the struggle of West Bank olive farmers to compete in a global economy.

You will hear Robert Massoud, founder of Zatoun,
a Toronto-based grass roots organization that supports Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, talk about what his organization does to promote and sell Palestinian olive oil in North America for fair trade prices.

Should we all be vegans? Part 1

Sat, 5 Jul 2008 11:01:16 -0400

In the latest Tidings from Hazel Kahan, I set out to discover what it was that inspires and motivates people to be animal rights activists and vegans. Until I interviewed these four young activists I had not realized just how intimate--and necessary--the connection is between the vegan and animal movements.
Part 1: Nora Kramer, Nathan Runkle
Please also visit their websites to learn more about the work being done by Nora Kramer www.humanecalifornia.org, Nathan Runkle www.mercyforanimals.org, Lauren Ornelas www.foodispower.org and Paul Shapiro www.hsus.org.

Should we all be vegans? Part 2

Sat, 5 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In the latest Tidings from Hazel Kahan, I set out to discover what it was that inspires and motivates people to be animal rights activists and vegans. Until I interviewed these four young activists I had not realized just how intimate--and necessary--the connection is between the vegan and animal movements.
Part 1: lauren Ornelas, Paul Shapiro
Please also visit their websites to learn more about the work being done by Nora Kramer www.humanecalifornia.org, Nathan Runkle www.mercyforanimals.org, Lauren Ornelas www.foodispower.org and Paul Shapiro www.hsus.org.

Lifting the veil over Cuba

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 15:01:40 -0400

Here are tidings from Cuba, tidings to lift the veil over an island hidden by myths and misconceptions for far too long by listening to a woman--Sandy Levinson, director
of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City, who has devoted most of her working life to showing people what Cuba really is.

How does a country crumble?

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:28:40 -0400

Since I completed this story, the day before Zimbabwe’s “real” elections on March 29, 2008, the world has heard the words Mugabe, Tsangirai and Zimbabwe often enough that the horrors of the country’s denouement have become front page material. In this recording you can hear Donald Fraser (not his real name), a white man, an artist, author and a safari guide, born in Northern Rhodesia and living in Harare, talk about how politics has changed his life utterly. Since the broadcast, Donald has left Zimbabwe for Zambia.

Reflections on the wall

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:58:42 -0400

This is a short audio commentary--my reflections about the wall--as a Jew, an artist, a human being. It was heard on In the Morning with Bonnie Grice on WLIU, 88.3fm www.wliu.org, a public radio station in Southampton, New York on April 9, 2008.

Two sides of the wall

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This is a series of conversations I recorded in Israel with people living on both sides of the wall built by Israel on the West Bank to separate its people from the Palestinians: with Yusuf, a 52-year old Palestinian living in Batir, an ancient West Bank village southwest of Jerusalem and west of Bethlehem-- and also with seven Israelis living in Tel-Aviv, Haifa and in and around Jerusalem. Among them are activists, artists, a psychoanalyst, an architect, a storyteller, a professor and a physician.

for more, http://www.hazeltidings.blogspot.com/

Moving sets you in motion

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I'm thinking of moving
I’ve set myself in motion.
It’s a very big move. It’s the doing of it that’s big, not so much the getting there or being there. It’s pulling up eleven years of roots and hoping not to kill the tree. It’s pruning, shedding, clipping, grafting, transplanting—and taking root again in another soil.

So you think you're not creative?

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Just because you think you're not creative
doesn't mean you aren't!

Water is H20, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,
But there is also a third thing that makes it water
And nobody knows what that is.

D. H. Lawrence, The Third Thing

Dr. Alice Rothchild

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Broken Promises, Broken Dreams

This is the first Tidings from Hazel Kahan!

An interview with physician and author Dr. Alice Rothchild about her work with the Jewish Voice for Peace Health and Human Rights project in Palestine and about her book “Broken Promises, Broken Dreams”.